"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns;there are things we know we know.We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns-the ones we don't know we don't know."
Donald Rumsfeld

Saturday, February 8, 2014

Do Artists Understand the Psychology of Sex?

by Native www.gooddeedsmall.com

People often wonder what attracts the opposite sex. According to scientists, the answer is art.

The study, Status and Mating Success Amongst Visual Artists, illustrates that point by showing that successful artists have more mates.1

“There is some evidence from mate preference studies that creativity is desired in a potential mate,” say the authors of the study. The authors, three scientists from the UK, tried to prove this hypothesis by collecting information from 236 visual artists.

The scientists — Helen Clegg, Daniel Nettle, and Dorothy Miell — gave 85 men and 151 women an online questionnaire about art careers and sexual behavior and learned that men showed the strongest correlation between artistic success and mating success.

For the study, the scientists questioned heterosexual artists about income earned from art, the importance of public and professional recognition, art exhibition, the cost of the art, and other topics. The artists were also questioned about the number of sexual partners who were acquired and the length of relationships with those partners.

“The results for mating success and artistic success are consistent with the sexual selection hypothesis of creativity, with more professional male artists having more sexual partners than less professional male artists but this relationship is not found for female artists,” say the scientists.

So, artistic men may be luckier in love. Ultimately, art may be the ultimate aphrodisiac.